Gareth A Davies has been a sports journalist for The Daily Telegraph since 1993. He is Boxing and MMA Correspondent. Has been intrigued by fight and combat sports from a young age. Personal sporting passions are rugby, cricket, and martial arts. Also covers the Paralympic Games. Hates getting his hair cut. Follow on Twitter @GarethADaviesDT

Educationalists accuse Government of “gross stupidity” as school sport funding cuts began to take effect

Leading educationalists at the coalface of sports delivery have accused the Government of “gross stupidity” as the draconian cuts to School Sport Partnerships announced last October by Michael Gove, the Secretary of State for Education, have begun to take effect.

Gove announced he was cutting the entire £162 million Exchequor funding for the network of 450 School Sport Partnerships [SSP], which involved nearly 22,000 people working as school sports co-ordinators, coaches and primary link teachers.
Several SSP development managers, some of whose schools have received the prestigious annual Telegraph/Aviva School Sports Matters Award for excellence, have told The Telegraph in the last week that “a postcode lottery in sports delivery” is about to take root in schools.

According to one partnership manager in a deprived area in an Olympic boroughs where the Children in Poverty Action Group recently released new statistics showing one third of children are living in poverty, “information has been sparse and there is utter confusion about the new funding, where it will come from and how it will be administered”.

The sports development manager argued that funding for sport for children in areas such as Waltham Forest is a lifeline for families living on less than £11 a day per family member after housing costs.�

Across the country, School Sport Partnership development managers have been forced to organise meetings with groups of Headteachers to fight for funding in their areas. Some have been successful. Not all will gain a stay of execution.

Lilian Lanceley, a partnership development manager in Birkenhead, told The Daily Telegraph: “Axing the financial support for sport and PE was an act of gross stupidity by the Government.”

“There is tangible evidence in our community that increased sport was raising school attainment, self-esteem, developing leadership, citizenship and social responsibility. That is the very agenda now desired by the Coalition, yet they took away the funding to continue that practice.”

Several School Sport Partnerships I spoke to about Gove’s decision to axe funding spoke of the dismantling of their partnership by stealth.

Repeated calls by School Sport Matters to organise interviews with either Mr Gove or Schools Minister Tim Loughton have been refused by the Education Department’s press office. “They have nothing more to add to the announcements already made,” a spokeswoman said.

Lanceley added: “Many community programmes will now not be a priority, so the progress made by schools in working with families and communities will just cease to exist. How sad that over ten years of hard work producing such a shift in the attitudes and skills of young people has been so indiscriminately rejected in order to ‘save’ money.”

There is also veiled criticism for the Government’s re-styled ‘School Games’, for which funding on a three-day-a-week basis has been announced for School Games Organisers. The emphasis is on ‘competition’, yet the criticism is that funding is only guaranteed, at this point, until the Olympics next summer.

“Many SSPs are now crumbling,” explained another partnership manager in The Midlands. “The biggest concern right now is the money for Sports Co-ordinators [SSCo]. Schools have received their budgets but there is no mention of SSCo money, the amount of money or how the money will be paid. Many schools across the country have redundancy notices out on sports co-ordinators as they are unaware as to the amount of money coming from Government.”

“In my county we have 10 partnerships and there serious concerns about six of them – despite the School Games Organiser funding. One partnership hub site is not willing to take the risk and at this point will not have a School Sport Partnership in the near future.”

Lanceley added: “This country was developing the best PE and Sport provision in the world, with cutting edge practice and innovation. A highly-trained, committed workforce is being made redundant. It’s demoralising and will mean a piecemeal approach to school sport delivery. It’s back to the dark old days.”